by Mitch Lorenz, Instructional Developer, Reinert Center
The Reinert Center’s Resources Revisited series highlights existing resources available to the SLU teaching community that may be especially timely or useful at certain points in the academic year.
This month, we are revisiting resources on culturally responsive teaching. Culturally responsive teaching is the application of the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of students to support learning more effectively (Gay, 2002). Culture, as applied in teaching, is the pattern of values, beliefs, practices, and assumptions that guide interpretation of information and events (Chavez & Longerbeam, 2016). This definition emphasizes the role experience and expectations play on the interaction between instructor, student, and learning context. Your interpretation of student behavior and every student’s interpretation of your teaching will vary based on lived experience.
The Reinert Center’s resources on culturally responsive teaching include a handbook, resources guides, and a week-long institute in which instructors apply principles of culturally responsive teaching to their classes.
The most comprehensive resource we is our handbook for culturally responsive teaching, which frames culturally responsive teaching practices within the context of SLU’s history and ever-shifting student population.
We offer a broad collection of resources devoted to supporting international students and inclusive teaching, both of which represent potential applications of culturally responsive teaching. A good place to start is with this guide to seeing the diversity in your classroom and this blog post detailing features of an inclusive syllabus. For those teaching online, culturally responsive online course design provides context-specific recommendations for increasing the cultural responsiveness of your online course.
For assistance with culturally responsive assessment, you might find value in this resource guide on culturally responsive assessment, which details steps you can take to recognize and react to cultural influences in assessments. For broader inclusive assessment recommendations, this resource guide on assessment in diverse classrooms speaks more broadly to the value of varying assessments with intention and this resource guide on inclusive assignments applies similar principles to assignments and class projects.
Across all learning contexts, reflecting on cultural differences in your classroom is the first step to more inclusive, culturally responsive, and effective learning environments. Consider our Culturally Responsive Teaching Institute if you would like to explore these themes deeper with generous amounts of time devoted to updating your existing class materials.
The Notebook 